Azi Lev-On

Ariel University · School of Communication

Introduction This study examines online communities as arenas where diverse forms of expertise converge to influence discourse and public opinion. Using the case of social media activism advocating for justice in the wrongful conviction of Roman Zadorov for the murder of Tair Rada, it highlights how these communities serve as platforms for “profess...

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the journal "Social Sciences" on "Technology, Digital Media, and Politics." Dr. Gal Yavetz and myself are editing a Special Issue of the journal "Social Sciences" (IF 1.7) titled "Technology, Digital Media, and Politics." We encourage submissions that address a variety of themes, including but not limited to the f...

The decision to share deeply personal experiences of sexual violence publicly is complex and multifaceted. This study provides valuable insights into this phenomenon. Interviews conducted with fifteen victims of sexual assault in Israel provide insights into the decision-making pathways of victims. The existing literature on sexual victims of sexua...

Driven by the increasing use of social media by people seeking to reconstruct family histories and preserve historical, cultural, and societal legacy, genealogy-based online communities are experiencing a surge in popularity. This study explores how trauma-affected communities use online communities to reconstruct their identities and histories, de...

When reporting on protests, the mainstream media often adopts the "protest paradigm," a set of "rules of thumb" determining which events receive coverage and how they are framed. Events challenging the status quo are often portrayed negatively. Coverage is often episodic rather than thematic, relying heavily on official sources. Additionally, prote...

This study delves into the complex decision-making processes of sexual violence survivors regarding public disclosure of their experiences. By constructing a cognitive map from interviews with ten media consultants, this research highlights that survivors often prefer seeking justice through social media rather than legal channels. This study was c...

This study examines students' perceptions of teacher authority in WhatsApp groups compared to the traditional classroom setting, with a focus on female students attending religious high schools. The strict authority structures inherent in these settings provide a unique context for the research. Most students reported finding it easier to challenge...

Exploring the nexus between digital media and citizens' exposure to diverse political views is imperative for understanding contemporary democratic engagement. This study builds upon Mutz and Martin's (2001) seminal research, integrating digital communication channels previously unexamined. Our findings suggest that the interpersonal character of m...

This article analyzes the media coverage of the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis. The analysis of 213 items from leading TV channels and newspapers revealed four main themes characterising the: coverage of the establishment’s preparations, coverage of morbidity, criticism of the establishment, and information provision. By and large, the media act...

In many civic domains we witness “video exchanges” between citizens and the establishment; for example, when citizens upload documentation of police violence, and the police uploads documentation from body cameras providing different takes of the incident. Can such videos influence public opinion? We studied if viewing visual content (of a murder r...

Numerous papers explored the media coverage of the COVID-19 crisis in mainstream and social media. However, research examining the experiences of journalists is still missing. This study is based on a thematic analysis of 20 interviews with prominent journalists from various media outlets—print, internet, television, and radio—who served as field r...

Purpose This study presents an innovative approach to analyzing user behavior when performing digital tasks by integrating eye-tracking technology. Through the measurement of user scan patterns, gaze and attention during task completion, the authors gain valuable insights into users' approaches and execution of these tasks. Design/methodology/appr...

המחקר בוחן כיצד סיקרה התקשורת בישראל את משבר הקורונה במהלך הגל הראשון שלו. במסגרת המחקר נותחו 213 כתבות מכלי התקשורת המובילים במסגרת העיתונות המשודרת והכתובה, אשר סיקרו את המשבר ואת דרכי ההתמודדות עימו בפתח גל התחלואה הראשון, בין התאריכים 15.3.2020 ו־ 21.3.2020 , אז נכנסה ישראל לסגר הראשון. מניתוח הכתבות עלו ארבע תמות מרכזיות המאפיינות אותן: סיקור...

כיצד מוצגת מחאה בתקשורת? תוך שימוש בניתוח תוכן עיתונאי, לצד מחקר נטנוגרפי, מאמר זה מציג את ממצאי המחקר האקדמי של סיקור מחאות ציבוריות בתקשורת, ומתמקד במחאה למען רומן זדורוב, שהתקיימה בעיקר בזירת הרשתות החברתיות והמרחב המקוון.

The outcomes of police investigations and legal proceedings frequently remain shielded from public scrutiny, leaving ordinary individuals devoid of access to these results and devoid of platforms for discourse. As a result, the general public’s ability to access legal materials and partake in informed discussions about them remains constricted, oft...

Social media platforms evolved into significant arenas for comprehending crises, hardships, violence, and murder. This paper contributes to the discourse within the intersection of social media and crime by delving into the narratives through which people pour meaning online into tragedies with personal significance. When people experience life-cha...

Purpose Aiming to explore how audience consume and produce media events in the digital, distributed and social era we live in, the paper analyzes the viewing patterns of video news items during a media event (the week of Donald Trump's presidential visit to Israel, the first to a country outside the US), compared to a parallel comparable “ordinary”...

The outbreak of COVID-19 has transformed our daily lives, raising concerns about transmission, infection, and recovery rates. This has led to a proliferation of rumors. Online social media platforms have played a significant role in fueling the spread of these rumors. To better understand the character of rumors that circulated on social media duri...

What characterizes the administrators (or admins) of social media groups dedicated to social change and protest against institutional injustices? The article analyses the characteristics of such admins using the activism for justice for Roman Zadorov in Israel as a case study. The findings demonstrate a phenomenon of ‘ad-hoc activism’: The backgrou...

The widespread adoption of social networking sites has made these platforms useful for governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to disseminate diplomatic messages and engage with their audience. However, it is unclear whether “top-down” or “bottom-up” approaches to diplomacy are more conducive for generating user engagement during arm...

ספרו החדש של פרופ' אזי לב-און, "רצח תאיר ראדה ופרשת רומן זדורוב: ממסד, צדק, אזרחים ורשתות חברתיות" יצא בהוצאת ידיעות ספרים. הספר כולל ניתוח מעמיק של רצח תאיר ראדה ופרשת זדורוב, ושל הפעילות הציבורית (במיוחד הדיגיטלית) למען צדק לזדורוב כמקרה בוחן לסביבות תקשורתית העכשווית בהן מתקיימים דיונים ציבוריים בסוגיות של חוק ומשפט. בספר נטען שהאקטיביזם הדיגיטל...

מה מאפיין את מנהלי הקבוצות שברשתות החברתיות שמוקדשות לשינוי חברתי ומחאה כנגד עוולות ממסדיות? הפרק מנתח את מאפייני המנהלים המובילים את הפעילות למען צדק לרומן זדורוב כמקרה בוחן. אאפיין את המנהלים מבחינות שונות )גיל, מגדר, ידע, מניע לפעילות, זמן המושקע בפעילות, דעה ועוד. אעמוד על התופעה של "אקטיביזם אד- הוק" שמגולמת בפעילות: הרקע של המנהלים הטרוגני מא...

מטרת מאמר זה היא לערוך המשגה לקטגוריה זו של "מושבעי הרשתות החברתיות". בחלק השני של המאמר נערוך דיון קונספטואלי במִתאם ( correspondence ) שבין המושבעים הפורמליים, דרך המושבעים צופים, ועד למושבעי הרשתות החברתיות. בחלק השלישי נדון - במאפיין המרכזי המייחד את מושבעי הרשתות החברתיות מהקטגוריות האחרות והיא האקטיביות שלהם. בחלק הרביעי נסקור את מקרה המבחן ש...

Social media have become primary venues for pubic conversations, but we know very little about how and where holy places are discussed in social media and who participates in these conversations. To address these questions, we look at the Temple Mount, one of the most significant places to the three ancient monotheistic religions, which is of great...

Purpose Social media have become the main channel of direct communication between members of parliament and constituents. The study analyzes the content in all Israeli MPs' Facebook channels throughout an entire term of parliament and asks if the results are consistent with the equalization or the normalization hypotheses. Design/methodology/appro...

The article demonstrates how social media activism polarizes and clusters into distinct deliberative and participatory arenas, using the case study of online activism for justice for Roman Zadorov in Israel. Zadorov was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Still, an overwhelming majority of Israelis think he is innocent, with the so...

Many government-sponsored policies and programs have been implemented in recent years to reduce digital inequality, but research on the effectiveness of such programs is severely lacking. We examine the short-term effects of participation in Lehava, the largest such program in Israel. Participants in our study completed a survey before and after ta...

MPs' social media channels have become key means for contact with the public. We used automated tools to extract all of the posts published on all Israeli MPs pages through an entire session of the parliament, and then sampled and manually coded the most popular posts. This enabled us to study the characteristics of the posts that stand out in term...

המחקר מאפיין את המשתתפים הערבים בתוכניות לצמצום אי־השוויון הדיגיטלי, ובודק את השפעות ההשתתפות בהכשרות מעין אלה לטווח הקצר ולטווח הארוך

Municipality Facebook pages are significant social media arenas for maintaining contact between representatives and their constituencies. The authors use digital tools to collect and analyze some 24,000 posts from the Facebook pages of all Israeli municipalities in a six-month period. Following a purely automatic linguistic analysis of the texts of...

Jurors are people who are exposed to legal proceedings and consequently exercise their judgment. A broad literature on law and film discusses the analogy between formal jurors, who are assigned to jury duty by the legal system, and "informal jurors"– "viewers-as-jurors" who encounter the legal system indirectly, through the media. In this paper, we...

בעידן הדיגיטלי התרחבו האפשרויות לצרוך תוכן באופן סימולטני, למשל האפשרות לגלוש באינטרנט תוך כדי צפייה במסך טלוויזיה. לסגנון זה של צריכת תוכן יש חשיבות מיוחדת כאשר התוכן הראשי הנצפה הוא תוכן חדשותי: מצד אחד, פעולות סימולטניות הקשורות לתוכן הראשי )פעולות שנעשות במסך שני( עשויות להגביר את המעורבות הפוליטית של צרכני החדשות; מצד שני, פעולות תקשורת סימולט...

Purpose The study examines the impact of presence, synchronicity of exposure and other variables on allocative decisions reached following a participatory budgeting event. Design/methodology/approach The study analyzes the distributive decisions reached following a participatory budgeting event, which took place in an academic institution, and stu...

Contemporary audiences have abundant access to news anywhere, anytime and through a wide range of media. Due to the short length of news items, they do not require prolonged attentional focus. Consequently, the genre is consequential for performing simultaneous activities, which are related (i.e. second screening) or unrelated (i.e. media multitask...

Social network sites are used by consumers to search for information before making purchase decisions. While most research has investigated what motivates consumers to share their experiences with others and its effect on consumer behavior, the current study focuses on consumer active information search (AIS), that is, explicit consumer requests fo...

מטרת המחקר: לנתח את השלכותיה של הטכנולוגיה התומכת ברפואה מרחוק על דפוסי עבודתו של רופא המשפחה, ובכלל זה את ההשפעות האפשריות על מעורבות רופאי המשפחה בקידום בריאותו של המטופל. שיטת המחקר: נבחר מדגם של 25 רופאי משפחה של "מכבי שירותי בריאות" מכל רחבי הארץ המשתמשים במערכת "הרפואה מרחוק". במהלך מפגשים עם הרופאים במרפאותיהם נערכו ראיונות עומק מובנים למחצה...

שמועות נפוצות בהקשרי משברים ואסונות; אנשים מפיצים אותן בניסיון ליצור סדר, להעניק משמעות או לנהל סיכונים במצבים מעורפלים. נגיף הקורונה הפך את שגרת חיינו ועורר חששות מפני דרכי ההפצה, ההידבקות וסיכויי ההחלמה, שהביאו לריבוי שמועות. ריבוי השמועות ניזון גם מהזמינות הגבוהה של הרשתות החברתיות וממרכזיותן בקבלת מידע והפצתו. מה אפיין את השמועות שנפוצו ברשתות...

בשנים האחרונות מתרחב השימוש של מפלגות ומתמודדים בשליחת מסרונים לבוחרים פוטנציאליים בקמפיינים. לעתים ניתן גם להשיב להודעות במסרון חוזר או באמצעות דף נחיתה מקוון וכך ליצור תקשורת דו- סטרית עם מצביעים פוטנציאלים . המאמר בודק את מידת ההיענות למסר ון פוליטי בזמן קמפיין בחירות ואת המשתנים המשפיעים עליה. זאת, באמצעות ניסוי טבעי במסגרתו נשלחו מסרונים לתושב...

The study presents findings from 67 semi-structured interviews with candidates running for heads of municipalities about their views on the advantages and drawbacks of political activity on Facebook, and the perceived impact of Facebook activity on election results. Findings indicate that candidates do not perceive a significant electoral advantage...

The purpose of this multi-method study is to explores municipal apps for communication with residents in Israel. We offer a review of the phenomena of dedicated municipal apps, explore the extent of penetration of municipal applications in an Internet-savvy country, analyze the profiles of adopting and non-adopting municipalities, classify the apps...

The study explores the state of penetration and usage of municipal smartphone applications in Israel – an internet-savvy country. We explore the extent of penetration of the applications, analyse the profiles of adopting and non-adopting municipalities, classify the apps’ common features, and analyse the motivations for developing them, and perceiv...

Purpose This study aims to examine the long-term effects of an Israeli digital literacy government program for disadvantaged populations, as they are perceived by participants of the program one year after completing the course. Design/methodology/approach Participants in the program were interviewed about the effects of participating in the progr...

This article explores how senior police officers perceive the presence of the police on social media. While interviewees argued that the police have a “duty of presence” on social media, they also reported that it should focus on information-provision and image-enhancement on the police’s home turf, avoiding confrontations in “external” social medi...

Social media platforms are today the main spheres in which politicians make political and personal statements, confront other public figures, and interact with the public. In the current study, the Facebook pages of all Israeli Members of Parliament (MPs) were scraped and analyzed for the entire period of the 19th Israeli parliament service (betwee...

Theoretical research on political communication between Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public has focused on the role, activities, and perceptions of the MPs themselves without noting the existence of an intermediate layer: Parliamentary Assistants (PAs). This study examines the presence of PAs in the process of MPs' interactions with the publ...

In recent years, usage of text messages sent by political parties and candidates to potential voters has been on the rise. Such messages may also offer response options, which create bilateral communications with potential voters. This article examines responsiveness to political text messages during election campaigns and the factors that affect s...

המאמר בוחן את מאפייני הדמוקרטיזציה בשיח הציבורי על אודות משפט וצדק במדיה החברתית המקוונת, ובודק מהן השלכותיה, תוך שימוש בפרשת זדורוב כמקרה בוחן. בפרק השני אציג רקע כללי על פרשת רומן זדורוב. הפרק השלישי סוקר את הסיבות, תקשורתיות ואחרות, לכך שפרשת זדורוב נותרת בשיח הציבורי זמן רב כל כך. הפרק הרביעי סוקר את המאפיינים של הסביבה התקשורתית שפועלת למען הצ...

The study explores the effects of eHealth system use on the relationships between physicians and their patients and on patients’ image of physicians’ professional identities as viewed by physicians

תכנית להב"ה היא הגדולה בישראל לגישור על אי-השוויון הדיגיטלי. במסגרת המחקר נסקרה הספרות אודות משתנים הקשורים לאי-השוויון הדיגיטלי ותכניות המיועדות לגישורו, נבדקו המאפיינים של הפונים למרכזי להב"ה (פרק 3), וכיצד המשתתפים נתרמים מהפרויקט בטווח הזמן הקצר (פרקים 4 ו-5). כמו כן נבדקו התפיסות של המשתתפים שסיימו את הקורס לפני שנה ומעלה, אודות התרומה של הקור...

Over the past decade, network-based platforms have become an increasingly integral part of the educational sphere, internet technology being used as a means of communication between teacher and students and teachers and parents, and colleagues. Most of the studies examining social-media-mediated relations between teachers and students conducted to...

In the past decade, the use of social media platforms for communication between teachers, students, and parents has become prevalent. The majority of studies examining student/teacher social media relations have focused on institutions of higher learning. The few studies that investigated primary and secondary age groups have primarily approached t...

Municipality Facebook pages are significant social media arenas for maintaining contact between representatives and their constituencies. The authors use digital tools to collect and analyze some 24,000 posts from the Facebook pages of all Israeli municipalities in a six-month period. Following a purely automatic linguistic analysis of the texts of...

Numerous studies address the uses and perceived effects of social media, but a scholarly void exists about how it is framed in the mainstream media. This study fills this void using a content analysis of news items that included references to social media in Israel’s six daily Hebrew-language printed newspapers during the Israel–Gaza war (2014). Th...

The study explores how Facebook was framed during the “tent protest” – the largest social protest in Israel’s history. Findings from of a content analysis of the local Israeli press indicate that Facebook was framed mainly as a political instrument assisting the protest, especially in the stages of recruitment, organization and dissemination of inf...

One of the key questions addressed by the study of online social media is whether or not they facilitate cross-cleavage communication between users of different nationality, ethnicity, religiosity, and other group affiliations. This study contributes to the literature by addressing communication across religious cleavages, which has scarcely receiv...

This exploratory study inquires into the validity and reliability of dedicated mobile phone diary applications. We developed Watchy, a dedicated mobile viewing diary application, and compared users’ compliance and usage patterns with those of users of the paper viewing diaries. Participants received paper diaries or installed mobile diary apps, wit...

This exploratory study inquires into the validity and reliability of dedicated mobile phone diary applications. We developed Watchy, a dedicated mobile viewing diary application, and compared users’ compliance and usage patterns with those of users of the paper viewing diaries. Participants received paper diaries or installed mobile diary apps, wit...

Social media are relatively new channels of communication between members of parliament and constituents. This study uses automatic analysis to produce a birds-eye-view of the content uploaded to Facebook pages of all MPs during an entire term of parliament. The findings demonstrate that the MP-Facebook sphere is non-egalitarian, in that it follows...

This exploratory study inquires into the validity and reliability of dedicated mobile phone diary applications. We developed Watchy, a dedicated mobile viewing diary application, and compared users’ compliance and usage patterns with those of users of the paper viewing diaries. Participants received paper diaries or installed mobile diary apps, wit...

The article explores the perceptions of senior police officers concerning the place of social media in the current media ecology, and the desired mode of operation of the police within them. The study demonstrates that the different forms of social media are perceived as significant arenas in the contemporary media landscape, which are "here to sta...

המחקר בודק את אופן הסיקור במקומונים בישראל של המחאה החברתית שהתרחשה במהלך קיץ 2011, במסגרתו נבדק כיצד מקומונים היוצאים לאור ברחבי הארץ ופונים לקהלים שונים סיקרו את המחאה, מהם קווי הדימיון והשוני בין מקומונים מאזורים שונים, בין פרקי זמן שונים במהלך המחאה, ובין סוגות עיתונאיות בתוך המקומונים. לצורך כך בוצע ניתוח תוכן כמותי ל- 1,005 כתבות שהתפרסמו במק...

Members of parliament’s (MPs) social media channels are significant arenas for communication between the public and national leaders. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to explore how these channels function during emergencies. We present findings from a mixed-method study of automatic and manual content analysis of a unique data...

The study examines perceptions of the significance and roles of new and mainstream media in protests, using interviews with 31 individuals involved in the 2011 protests in Israel: Activists and Campaigners, who organized the protests ‘on the ground’; Techies, who operated the digital presence of the protests; and Journalists, who covered the protes...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze contemporary uses and gratifications (U&G) of the media, focusing on the differences between emergency and ordinary times, and between media consumers in the border region and in the home front during the Israel-Gaza War (2014). Design/methodology/approach The study used a questionnaire containing 18...

Numerous studies address the uses and perceived effects of social media, but a scholarly void exists about how it is framed in the mainstream media. This study fills this void using a content analysis of news items that included references to social media in Israel’s six daily Hebrew-language printed newspapers during the Israel–Gaza war (2014). Th...

Social Media platforms are today the main spheres in which politicians make political and personal statements, confront other public figures and interact with the public. In the current study, the Facebook pages of all Israeli MPs were scraped and analyzed for the entire period of the 19th Israeli parliament service (between 2013-2015), in order to...

Social media constitute useful and effective platforms for miscarriage of justice campaigners to challenge state authorities and decisions taken by the criminal justice system. To characterize such endeavors, this study analyzes the activity in such a major group dedicated to the murder case of Tair Rada and the trial of Roman Zadorov, one of the m...

The article analyzes contemporary patterns of news watching, concentrating on the experience of watching news through multiple platforms and second screens (i.e., not only via TV sets but across additional new media channels), and while performing additional communication activities simultaneously (i.e., media multitasking). The data is based on th...

Facebook has recently emerged as a central communicative arena for political representatives and constituencies. Still, there are very few studies about Facebook usage in municipal campaigns. The paper adds to this literature by presenting a comprehensive picture of the scope, character and impact of Facebook usage, and the perceptions of candidate...

The cross-over of journalists to politics is not a novel phenomenon, but in Israel it has intensified in recent years with the increase in the number and the name recognition of the journalists who make the transition. Why do journalists make the transition to politics? Do they make an effective use of their media skills, and how do they perform as...